Fraser Island Day 1

Friday January 21, 2011

This morning we joined a group tour to see the highlights of Fraser Island. The island is a UNESCO World Heritage sight and is the largest sand island with a range of varying ecosystems. The island is named after the British Captain James Fraser, who was shipwrecked on the island and whose wife, Eliza, was the only survivor. Eliza went back to England and made a living telling stories of the aboriginal people of Fraser Island. The island is also known as K’gari (pronounced Gurrie), which is what the Aboriginal Butchulla people called the island.

We first went to Lake McKenzie, which is a fresh water lake perched on a sand dune. “Coffee rock,” which is sand mixed with decaying plant material lines the bottom and prevents the water from draining through the sand. The lake is a fantastic clear blue and surrounded by beaches of the finest white sand. While walking along the beach, we saw a black and yellow monitor lizard, called a gohanna. The next stop was Central Station, which is a former logging camp, and walked along a trail that followed the crystal clear Wanggoolba Creek. The rainwater filters through the sand into an underground aquifer that then spills out in many creeks around the island. The aquifer holds thirty times more freshwater than Sydney Harbor. The Wanggoolba creek has trees studded with staghorn ferns and some rare gigantic king ferns. It is amazing that this subtropical rainforest is able to grow in soil that is just pure sand. After lunch at Eurong Beach Resort, we traveled drove along Seventy Five Mile Beach (which is really only about 59 miles long) on the Pacific side of the island. The sand here is a more yellow color due to the minerals in the sand. We stopped at Pinnacle Point, where there are dunes of colored sand from the oxidized minerals and then saw the Maheno Shipwreck. The Maheno, which was a luxury cruise liner build in 1905, was being towed to Japan in 1935 when it was struck by a cyclone and washed on the beach. The rusted and rotted remains of the boat remain on the beach. We then stopped to dip our toes in the cool water from Eli Creek, as the freshwater flows onto the beach to meet the ocean. Approximately 4.5 million liters of water flow from Eli Creek to the ocean hourly. Finally, we stopped at a look out point to view Stonetool Sand Blow. This is an area where the winds have blown sand over a section of rainforest, creating an eerie area where the tops of dead trees are visible through the sand.

We arrived back at the hotel just in time for another rainstorm and then ate dinner at the casual Sandbar. After dinner, we went for a guided night walk around the property. On the beach, we caught our first glimpse of a dingo!